The death of Shannon Stone, the man who died after falling at Rangers Ballpark, had personal meaning for me. As a kid, I had an irrational, omnipresent fear that I would trip and fall while descending the aisle in the upper deck, and go over the edge. Especially at Shea Stadium, where the stairs were alarmingly steep.

But I don't intend to take someone else's tragedy and make it my own. I never fell, and I never saw anyone else fall. Nor do I want to linger on the Stone family's personal suffering. Instead, let's discuss railing height.

That includes the concrete step plus the railing at Rangers Ballpark, so the Rangers are certainly in compliance. The exact height of the barrier in those left field seats hasn't been reported yet, but it's clearly more than 26 inches. To judge by the pictures, it's somewhere around hip height—near, but probably not above, an average adult man's center of mass.

(Notice the higher barrier at the bottom of the aisle. The 26-inch rule doesn't apply there. Where people might be coming down stairs, the Building Code minimum is 42 inches. My childhood fears were not completely without foundation.)

So while there's a legal minimum, there's no prescribed maximum. Except there is, of course. Sightlines! That most beneficial development in ballpark construction, which has really only taken hold in the past couple of decades. Forget retro, forget retractible domes, forget exposed concourses: the true legacy of the boom in new stadiums is the focus on open sightlines. If you're going to a game, they want you to be able to see it well without interruptions.

In this mindset, railings and other barriers are a nuisance. Too high, especially in sloped seating, and it interferes with the view. Railings become a problem to work around rather than a measure to be emphasized. So is this a problem special to the new ballparks?

So while the Rangers raised some barriers after the first fan fell, they didn't raise them all. A commitment to sightlines, perhaps? Those selfsame sightlines so praised by every architectural critic and sports writer and fan? It would be hard to blame the team.

I no longer worry about falling when I sit in the upper deck at a game, because I'm older and moderately more rational. But then, if Shannon Stone's death hadn't been so eminently irrational, it wouldn't sting as much. Maybe the worst-case scenario, captured in last night's indelible video, is never a bad thing to keep in the back of your mind, especially when you luck out with first-row tickets.